St. Andrew’s Pictou, June 19^th 2005 Father’s Day; Baccalaureate Service

 

Death Bonus

 

Genesis 21:8-21

Matthew 10:24-39

 

We start our Father’s Day scriptures with a weird kind of story: Abraham a famous guy by Bible standards throws a woman with her 13 year old son Ishmael with some bread and a flask of water, out of the family, to die in the desert.

 

Now of course, you have to know, “the rest of the story.”

 

It had been decades since Abraham and his wife had been teenagers.  In fact they had become quite elderly and they still didn’t have a child. Worried about not having an heir, they relied on an old desert tradition; another woman Hagar, being Sarah’s mistress would make love with Abraham, and then technically, the child they had would belong to Abraham and Sarah, and they would then have a child to pass on the family farm, as it were. Abraham and the maid Hagar made love, a sperm united with and egg and we have a son Ishmael born, later to be the founder of the Moslem race.

 

Worked out well for awhile, but miracle of miracles, Sarah had also had a baby boy (Isaac) first generation after Abraham of the Jewish people. Everything was great, except that now we have an age old problem develop; two women and one man: jealousy.

 

Since they now don’t need Ishmael as an heir because they have their own son, Isaac, Sarah wants the other boy Ishmael gone; she wants him out of the picture completely. Sarah doesn’t want Ishmael complicating the proceeds of the will.

 

(You will still see that scenario today. Girlfriends and boyfriends never want the old boyfriend or the old girlfriend around, but it is harder to throw them out of Pictou today then it was to throw them out of town in Biblical times.)

 

The text even says that God himself told Abraham it was OK to turf them out, so early in the morning he gives Hagar and Ishmael some bread and water and points them to the desert and off they go. Sounds brutal to us and to Hagar and Ishmael. They were scared. You don’t last long in the desert without water!

 

Eventually, the water runs out. Hagar puts her son under a bush and sits about an arrow’s flight distant away and sits because she can’t bear to watch her son die.

 

God intervenes; God hears the child’s cry. He tells Hagar to go and hold her son that they will be OK. She does and a well with water then appears. They drink the water. Ishmael grows up to be a good man; his mother gets him a wife from Egypt and he turns into a great man and founder of the Moslem race.

 

(The same thing can happen today. You will think that you are finished, your plans are destroyed, and then [if you are open to it] you will get a scholarship, or a job, or someone will help you out, and life will go on.)

 

Every “death” in this story has a hidden bonus:

-Abraham and Sarah think they will have no heir and then Hagar has Ishmael.

-We think that Abraham and Sarah are the end of the family line and they have a baby: Isaac.

-It looks like Hagar and Ishmael will die, they get water and the Moslem race is born.

-we have this older couple Abraham and Sarah who don’t look like they have any future and God tells them they will parent great nations and they do: the Jewish Nation, the Moslem nation and later the Christian nation.

 

The same thing is metaphorically true for the graduates of today.

 

Did you notice in the story that Abraham had a celebration on the day that Isaac was weaned?

 

High school graduation means that you are now weaned: you are supposed to go on to university, or get a job, or go to community college, but the days of being carefree teenager, the days of childhood are over!

 

Adult responsibility is starting to creep in.

 

You students probably didn’t even notice it, but your childhood days just died. Now you will have a two month reprieve, you probably won’t even notice it but when this September rolls around as it most certainly will, you will not be a High School student ever again.

 

I guess there is a certain kind of sadness when we experience the death of one section of our life and move on to the next, except that there is also always a bonus as life evolves and moves on, as it will always move on. If I died yesterday, someone else would be conducting this service today.

 

There is a certain sadness when we see 4 and 5 year olds get old enough to go to school. We almost hate to see kids grow up. One little girl, about 4 climbed up beside her mother in bed and her mother looked at her in love and said, “I wish you could stay like this for ever.”

 

She said, “Then why do you keep making me eat all of those vegetables?”

 

But there are the bonuses: the flowering of the person, the joys of accomplishment, the sparkle of the uniqueness, the stories multiply, friends are made, and life goes on.

 

Graduates, life is full of death.

 

There will be people deaths. People you love will die. There will be deaths of the spirit and deaths of ideas, painful deaths of friendships, separations, betrayals which are painful deaths, and ultimately your own, which we hope will be a long time away. We hope that you will experience all of the hope and joy that life has to offer before that day comes for you.

 

There is a lot of events, people, and experiences that we might have to fear, but Jesus said, “…have no fear of them; for nothing is covered up that will not be uncovered, and nothing secret that will not be known.”

 

One of the things that makes life so difficult is what is covered up. The Gomery inquiry is hardly the only cover up, although the media might try to make it look unique. Fashion is a cover up. Fashion could cover up someone to the extent that you might be able to see the person who might be your best friend or who you should marry. Being “cool” is a cover up. Being “charming” is a cover up. Some compliments can even be a cover up.

 

“He is so charming.” Is really not a compliment, because you would have to ask, “Why is that person charming?” What do they have to hide?

 

Phony people can be well dressed, cool, and charming, but you go into business with, become friends with, or marry someone like that at your peril: destruction will happen by the time you know the real person.

 

As Jesus said, there is “nothing secret that will not be known.”

 

The problem is only that it would be better to know what you need to know sooner rather than later.

 

With all of the death we human beings must face, the bonus for us of having God in our lives is just as good and powerful as it was for Abraham and Sarah 3,000 years ago, and for Hagar and Ishmael, too. God is the bonus that is still active and comes through with all of the deaths we must and will most certainly face.

 

Don’t confuse this church building for God. Churches close when nobody comes to them. This church, like any church could disappear but only “God endures unchanging on.”

 

Whatever stage we are at in life, the bonus we need most that God gives us is: that we are loved by God.

 

The evidence that we are loved by God is that he sent his son Jesus to teach us that God loves us and what ways we can live best so that we can get the most out of life. Isn’t that why we are here? – to get the most out of life.

 

Jesus saves us from the deaths that threaten our well-being.

 

One of the best and most helpful things that Jesus said, that we need to know is:

“Don’t throw your pearls before swine!”

 

What “your pearls” are is the things that are precious to you: your privacy, your sexuality, your health, your trust, your money, your opinion, your life. “Swine” means “pigs.”

 

So what Jesus said, was: “Don’t throw the things that are precious to you to the pigs.”

Or you put yourself in danger when your trust, money, or you sleep with the pigs!

 

In today’s language: Beware of the cool, the charming, and the trendy.

 

AMEN             Rev. Alan Stewart